Mint Chip Meringues, Black Forest Cookies, and Sugar Cookies

My mom loves meringues and always asks me to make them. For some reason, I really don't enjoy making them, though. Probably the time and care that goes into them isn't offset by it being interesting for me to make. But I'll give it to her, they really are delicious--and homemade ones are so much better than store-bought.

These were especially delicious. I usually make cream cheese mints for Christmas but I really didn't feel like dealing with candies this year, so I needed something minty. These meringues were flavored with mint extract and a sprinkling of mini chocolate chips. I partially folded some pink gel food coloring into the meringue before spooning it onto a baking sheet to give it swirls of color.

A handful of mini chocolate chips is not nearly enough chocolate for my cookie boxes, so I made these Black Forest cookies. I'm pretty sure they were out of the new Baked cookbook as well, but in the baking frenzy I just can't be sure. I don't have a seperate photo of these, but the picture didn't do it justice anyway (in this case a picture is not even worth a sentence.) They had a chewy, almost brownie like texture which was punctuated by dried cherries and some chocolate chips. Delicious!

Finally, I made sugar cookies. Well butter cookies acutally. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. It's got to be the best simple, ready to decorate cookie recipe out there. The dough is easy to work with, the cookies don't spread much (as long as you keep it somewhat chilled, but you don't have to be as meticulous about it as usual), and the taste is far superior to a classic sugar cookie. FYI, I scored the bottom part of the bulb (where it would screw into the string of bulbs or light socket) with the back of a paring knife. This made it easer for the icing step and--if you don't want to ice it because you are decorating them with colored sugars before you put them in the oven--it gives the illusion of threads without frosting.

I made a simple royal icing with meringue powder (you can find this as some grocery stores as well as Williams-Sonoma) because (a) I find it easier than using egg whites and (b) you aren't using raw egg so no worries about immune system stuff. Alternatively you can use pasturized egg white product, but I find that it takes a little more finessing than the meringue powder based stuff. I piped the border of the bulb, let it set then flooded the center. I dyed a very small bit of the piping consistency icing with black gel color to get the silver-y grey for the light bulb threads and just followed the indentations I'd made before baking. Easy as pie--or cookies, I suppose!